Monday, May 31, 2010
Alcatraz has babies! Cuteness overload!
The visitor to Alcatraz wants his Al Capone, his "Machine Gun" Kelly and his "Birdman" Stroud. She wants to tour our rows of tiny cells, to see the narrow cots, the lead paint peeling off of crumbling walls and to hear the loud sounds of cell doors slamming, all behind a curtain of dense San Francisco fog. And we'll give them that.
But not before they find themselves surrounded by these speckled grey balls of pure fuzz and cuteness. Every year around this time, Alcatraz becomes an avian nursery nurturing around five percent of the world's baby WEGUs.
You'll be slain when confronted with three thousand of these. The following pictures are from summers past.
Nowhere else can you buy a ticket for a reasonable price, take a twelve minute ferry ride and experience this. Our baby WEGUs are beginning to hatch!
These were the first hatchlings we saw:
Pardon the graininess. This gull family lives deep in the parade ground area, which is closed for nesting season. As more chicks hatch, we'll have many more photos for you.
Unfortunately, it's our duty as a metal-themed bird blog to bring you br00tality as well. We don't enjoy doing it, but the bitter fact is that these balls of fluff often die at their cutest. One of the first clutches hatched yesterday and each chick promptly died. Amazingly, out of the thousand nests on the island, this was the one featured in our recent post entitled "Now we wait..." I wonder whether I've cursed this gull family. One individual:
But there is optimism to be had. Each nesting season we have our favorites that we root for and many of them go on to fledge successfully.
Speaking of babies...
Well, no one thinks of our fierce little peregrine tiercel as a baby but the little guy still hasn't donned his adult plumage. The books say we can expect him to turn from brown to blue after the breeding season. If he decides to stay and he survives through to winter, we'll have a better idea of where he falls among the three North American subspecies of the peregrine falcon. It's been suggested that he's a Peale's falcon, a coastal, northwestern variety that is the biggest and darkest of the three, and the largest subspecies of peregrine in the world. Our little guy may be a little small for all of that.
One concern with our peregrine is that while we still spot him regularly, the frequency of observation has declined considerably and now your only shot to observe him is to carefully scan the lighthouse. When his crop is full and he's feeling sedentary, he can be found on the upper ledges.
Ryan T. Gosling! Baby goose!
If there were an Intrade contract that Ryan would fledge, it would be trading at 95 cents for a dollar payout at this point. This guy/gal is money in the bank:
While we've been very critical of the geese that nest on Alcatraz, it's been a true privilege to watch this little guy at every stage of his development, from a cute but anonymous tiny ball of fuzzy green confetti, to a little yellow football-sized creature trying to make its way in the world. Now he's going on to be a real goose, quickly growing into his adult plumage. Where does the time go?
One more thing: Maganrord has one thing to say to the following pair of California gulls that has been seen near the old prison incinerator: Nest, or get off the spot! We're tired of seeing you hanging around doing nothing! We want to see some CAGU chicks.
Labels:
It's here...
Catch all the details in tomorrow's post. There will be news on the island's falcon, ravens, gulls and a certain special gosling, the unlikely fledging of which may or may not be a sign of the end times.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Rehash: Alcatraz is an awful place for geese to breed
If Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino taught us anything (and he did) it's that when it comes to success in reproductive activities, it's a numbers game.
So let's review some numbers.
Pairs of geese that nest on Alcatraz at present: 10 (estimate)
Goslings typically hatched to each pair: 8
Rough total of goslings produced, based on the estimate of 10 breeding pairs: 80
Total number of goslings known and recorded to have ever fledged on Alcatraz: 0 (there is a rumor that one once fledged, but our biologist denied the existence of a record thereof)
Yes, zero. We do have one brave little gosling threatening to fledge this year and as wonderful as 'Ryan T. Gosling' aka 'Robinson Crusoe' aka 'The OMG Gosling' may be, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino would hit us with a cocky reminder that many years of zero goslings fledged followed by one season in which they went one for eighty, is an absolute disaster, bro.
One tiny ray of light
We have an unknown number of mallards that nest on the island as well. The ducklings fail unfailingly, year on year. While a Canada goose may fledge every few years, the ducklings never do.
This afternoon, BourbonHawk took a stroll around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park and she saw this:
It's a creche of four breeding adults and seven hopefuls. These young geese are on the five yard line to fledging rather than being gull or raven food and it has everything to do with where they are.
LadyBird, BourbonHawk and I probably encountered this same creche five weeks prior and I blogged about it here.
The long and the short of it was that we saw four adults and eight goslings going about their business when an opportunistic western gull, lured to the creche by children throwing bread, snatched up a defenseless fuzzball, leaving only seven.
As tragic a moment as that was, five weeks later there are still seven goslings likely to fledge.
In contrast, Alcatraz is a place where breeding geese apparently do not form cooperative creches, and the numbers of young geese go from this:
to this:
and in very short order, the last goslings are predated.
On Alcatraz, there isn't much fresh water, perhaps contributing to territorial behavior and a lack of cooperation among them as they fight over what little there is.
Between that and the efforts of our thousands of large gulls and our two enormous ravens, nary a gosling goes uneaten.
Numbers:
2010 Alcatraz Canada geese: 1 for 80. (1.25% success)
Some random Stow Lake creche: 7 for 16 (43.75% success)
C'mon, Alcatraz geese... One gosling fledged is nice but the bottom line is that we want to see fewer of you breeding on the island in 2011.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
A call to experts: is this the head of a juvenile pigeon guillemot?
We could use some help figuring out what our ravens were eating that day.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Oh, bloody murder
Our last post was dedicated to cuteness. This is not.
One post prior, we referred to our common ravens as apex-apex predators. Saturday night, one Alcatraz western gull learned this was true, then succumbed peacefully to its wounds. It was then returned to the bay.
The story began one day earlier. Our remaining young raven (picture included in the previous post) fell from one of Alcatraz's tallest cypress trees where our breeding ravens make their home.
The branchling hobbled around on injured legs seeking shelter, managing to reach a smaller nearby tree. Perhaps with human help, it was able to escape into the upper branches.
For reasons unknown to us at Maganrord, the raven pair perceived an unfortunate western gull as a threat to its reproductive prospects. The ravens attacked the gull, hurting it badly. The following morning, it was dead.
This morning, the violence wasn't over. We saw our two breeding ravens anxiously patrolling the area around their baby's new tree, aggressively engaging two gulls and making aerial contact with one.
I'm slapping myself for not snapping a better picture, but this was the best I could do:
Later, I observed the younger raven hopping around in its new branches, accompanied by one member of the adult pair.
Today, I found it in yet another new location, on a railing near a structure we call Building 64, a civil war era fortification that was later expanded and reconfigured for use as a warehouse and housing for prison personnel.
This afforded us our best opportunity yet to observe the guy. Media deluge on the source of the trouble:
She/he is already working on fierce raven poses:
(relatively) little guy preens a bit, has a look around
In the following video, you'll see an adult raven keeping tabs on his/her new progeny. Today, the parent birds took turns being vigilant:
And, for the sake of cuteness, our little branchling strikes an ornery pose:
We will absolutely keep you updated.
Odds, ends:
Oh, and for such a young raven, it also does a mean gargoyle:
We haven't seen the Alcatraz peregrine in more than a week. I'm getting a bad feeling about this.
Young snowy egret chicks are showing their legs and hopping around in their colonial thicket. Oh, growing up.
One island raven aficionado gave us a tip that this, the following picture that we took of a decapitated bird chick may actually feature the head of a newly hatched raven. What do you think?
And this guy:
This little survivor goes by many names including, 'The OMG Gosling', 'Ryan the Gosling', and 'Robinson Crusoe'. S/he'll fledge.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Mommy, what is "stacking"? Also, babies, babies, babies!
In polite company, we don't say these gulls are mating. We don't say they're courting or consummating their monogamous bond and for God's sake, we absolutely never say that they are engaging in the sexual exchange of genetic information necessary in the natural course of human and animal reproduction! No; feel free to take your child to Alcatraz, because the closest thing you'll hear to a four letter word on The Rock is "stacking", the eupha franca for the preceding act.
ALSO, BABIES!
Yes, these acts produce babies.
I have no fear of becoming a cutecore blog. I relish the possibility. When given the choice between more or fewer fuzzy baby animals, I'll go with more every time. Not BR00TAL or metal at all, I know.
Snowy Egrets:
Dinosaurs, anyone?
Black Crowned Night Herons:
Hey ravens. Looks like you missed a few.
Common Ravens:
The young and thoughtful apex-apex predator leans out of the nest, vocalizes.
Dastardly bird feeds its little branchling. The little bird is hoping someday to be just as dastardly and objectionable as mom and dad.
Canada Goose!
click on the image for a larger size
Our last gosling says: "I'm gonna get THIS BIG!"
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